In recent years, internet technology has become very popular. The internet is now used by many individuals, businesses, educational institutions, and government organizations. With the explosion of internet usage, however, a number of issues have arisen. One issue that has arisen is the security of data. Nowhere has this become more apparent than with the use of cloud-based services. Cloud services provide network-shared and dynamically allocated computational resources for data storage and processing. However, the efficiencies gained through the use of the cloud may be at least partially offset by security risks of one or more of the networked resources. While private companies may be able to afford such risks, public entities such as the government may desire a higher level of security.
Current authentication and accreditation processes (such as those for Intelligence Community Directive 503 for information technology systems security risk management, certification and accreditation) are manual and cumbersome. It would be desirable to provide authentication and accreditation processes having the elasticity or fluidity sufficient for modern cloud environments.